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ryansgulch
Collection post
Mar. 18th, 2011 05:27 pmQuestions, comments, etc. go here.
Quick definitions!
NINET-Acronym for Neurally Integrated Networking Electronic Therapy. (A type of therapy utilizing highly advanced virtual reality programs to send several people into a selective miniature unconscious.)
Doctor-The psychiatrist and guide in NINET therapy who writes the realms. (has gone through massive training in order to work NINET.)
Patient-The one who controls the virtual realms and collaborates with the Doctor to build the realms. (Has had the barrier between conscious and subconscious removed and lives in a constant lucid dream in exchange for full use of their brain.)
Case-The recipient of NINET.
Doctor- A quick way to denote a former Doctor who has lost their mind to the process.
Andie-Cassandra's nickname.
Quick definitions!
NINET-Acronym for Neurally Integrated Networking Electronic Therapy. (A type of therapy utilizing highly advanced virtual reality programs to send several people into a selective miniature unconscious.)
Doctor-The psychiatrist and guide in NINET therapy who writes the realms. (has gone through massive training in order to work NINET.)
Patient-The one who controls the virtual realms and collaborates with the Doctor to build the realms. (Has had the barrier between conscious and subconscious removed and lives in a constant lucid dream in exchange for full use of their brain.)
Case-The recipient of NINET.
Andie-Cassandra's nickname.
CHARACTER
Name: Ethan Ross
Age: 30
Appearance: Ethan is 5'9", of a leaner build. He prefers comfortable, simple clothes, normally wearing white shirts, sweaters or coats with some slacks or dark jeans. He's got short, dark hair that falls in some waves. Ethan's nearly always got a pen in one of his pockets, and writes on his arms when he has no paper. He tends to carry himself straight up, proud and tall, with a habit of using his hands to illustrate whatever he's talking about.
Chosen PB: Ben Whishaw + various art icons.
Personality: Pretty much, Ethan's default emotion is "calm/happy". He's an optimist, with the belief that hard work and time will allow anything to be made possible, on any scale. Got a personal goal? He says to pour all your effort into it. World peace? That will take more time, in his mind, but it's possible. Dedication forms the core of his life philosophy.
He's not very materialistic-living with no money for luxuries for a while made him think that although they are nice, luxuries aren't neccessary to live a fulfilling life. Instead, his passion lies with furthering his intellect through reading, learning, and listening to other's stories in the hope of learning from them. As much a teacher as a student, Ethan is glad to share his experiences and what he's learned if someone asks.
Ethan believes his calling is to help people, and so always keeps his eyes out for when he can. He doesn't try to force his help onto others, though, if it's rejected he'll just shrug his shoulders and keep the offer open. He's very social, navigating large groups with relative ease, and tries to give everyone a chance at acquaintanceship, if not friendship immediately. From his work with Cassandra, he's grown far more patient with people, and will put up with far more than he used to.
Depending on what emotion it is, it will either be over incredibly fast or take a long while. Anger never stays for long with him, he's inclined to forgive and forget after he's allowed to get his rage out, but sorrow is the opposite. He can stay sad for weeks, even if he pushes it aside to focus on other things. During this time, he's most likely to fall into what he's flirting with anyway in his work-obsession. Ethan will get interested in a project or a book or the like, and spend hours and hours with it, forgetting to eat or sleep until he'll pass out from physical and mental exhaustion. In this area of his life, Ethan proves himseld not intelligent about everything, as he never seems to learn. It's been a recurring theme throughout his life, from studies to training to investigations, he has the potential to become hyperfocused with it. Andie has been extremely helpful in getting him to recognize the beginning signs and so try to ward it off, but he's not always good at seeing them.
The long exposures to NINET he has had have caused him to have a light form of the Patient state, appearing in short flashes where he will slip into what's best described as a wake induced lucid dream (WILD) state. He dreams while awake, and cannot separate reality from dreams until it passes. During WILD state, his moods shift, he doesn't always make too much logical sense, and even hallucinates images at times. He's fully conscious of what he says and does during these periods, and apologizes if he's around people when the state passes.
World Information: The basic outline of Ethan's world is that it follows the modern day, but with an immense surge of progress in the sciences. This means electronics, biology, chemistry, physics, biotechnology, etc. have all taken massive strides forward in their development. Outside of that, it's still the same crazy bundles of political strife, social issues, etc. that today is. The specific change in Ethan's world that I focus on is the development of NINET, as that is what truly makes it another world.
History: Ethan Ross was born a normal, perfectly healthy son to a middle class family, growing up a practical stereotypical statistic. Quiet life, son to two parents in their thirties, learning to ride a bike and write his letters in his neighborhood while growing up. Sheltered? A little, but his parents only wanted what was best for their son. They had the dream of him growing up to be a lawyer, a business owner, something where he would take charge of his dream and power through.
He certainly had the charisma to do so. And no one could call him shy. Starting from elementary school, his circle of friends and acquaintances was strengthened into a solid bunch. You could call him fairly popular. And he lazed through his assignments, floating along with decent grades. He could have tried harder, anyone who knew Ethan knew if he had his mind on something he’d try his best, but there was no motivation. No spark to make him turn his eyes from random games and hanging out to his future. He’d become something, and it didn’t matter what.
All that shifted during his junior year of high school.
A collection of supposedly “incurable” mental health patients reached headline status around the globe. The reason why? The relatively recent method of treatment known as NINET had selected them out to receive their version of therapy and would make the results public. Much emphasis was placed upon the cases’ consent and the personal nature of the treatment. When the results were collected in the end, the results were stunning. All medical jargon and stilted phrasing aside, the sheer fact could be brought down to two words: it worked. And everyone had shown improvement, some even going so far as to be declared cured. Claims of false documentation and lying from the cases sprung up immediately, but in legal trials, the research was shown to be nothing but honesty.
Ethan watched it all enraptured. NINET was certainly something he had heard of, but never bothered to look at closely. It seemed too out there, too touchy to be realistic. But here was proof that the concept was valid, reachable, and that it really was all it wanted to be. Something to actually help those that needed it instead of just saying so. The people who ran it, the Doctors…they were honest, in a way that the others in the medical industry weren’t. And they became his idols.
He became obsessed with researching them, digging into the background of NINET, and seeing what it took to join them. This path became his dream, and he threw himself into schoolwork, trying to graduate high so he’d have a better shot at getting accepted to further education and from then on pursuing his goal. When he finished high school, second in his class, Ethan finally told his parents what he planned to do with his life. They didn’t take it well, and instead of supporting him, grew furious that he would dare take such a “dangerous” job, one so “inhumane” and “abnormal”. They vowed not to pay for any more education beyond the year of college they had already done for, demanding he switch his goals to something more sensible. Ethan sat and heard it all, nodding when appropriate, letting them rage. When they had settled down enough, he quietly told them that if that was the case, he would find a way to pay for the rest of his education and move out as soon as he could, as they were not going to stop him from following this. Tears, threats of disownment, bribery, nothing affected him, for in the end he would repeat his desire.
True to his word, during the year he picked up two jobs and moved in with his best friend while taking his courses, and spent the next three years getting by on nothing while never losing his oddly intense drive. During that time he took interviews and relentlessly worked so that he would get admitted to the Doctors’ training program directly after he got his degree. It paid off in the form of an early acceptance letter that guaranteed his immediate transfer to one of the campuses three months after the end of his final college year.
Ethan moved to the campus, unpacked his things, and descended into what was known among Doctors as “hell work”-four years of massively intense training that managed to combine medical school with information technology training, with an amount of hardware and engineering thrown in-Doctors were also expected to know how to repair small to moderate damage to the equipment. During this intense training, he fell majorly ill by pushing himself too far, but recovered within a month to catch up on the work he missed. Afterwards was the mandatory year of understudy as junior Doctor. During this time, Ethan met the Patient Cassandra Moriarty, and the two became friends. When the year ended and he received his certification (Ethan was 27 then), they began to work together.
In Ethan’s second year of working as a Doctor, him and “Andie”, as he had come to know her, encountered their most difficult Case, a man known in the records as solely “Brian”. Brian was a convicted murderer with bipolar disorder and psychosis, who had shown no reaction to regular therapy or medication. And as the pair would learn, he had no intention of letting NINET work, either. He refused to talk seriously to Ethan, leading into long sessions of no progress and testing the limits of Ethan’s patience. Finally, Ethan decided to create a realm based off of Brian’s delusions as a sort of last resort into attempting to help. He knew that this was risky, and should he be found out, some sort of punishment would have to happen. But seeing it work was too much of a lure for him, and so he went ahead and made the realm.
It was not a success, to put it mildly. After attempting to kill Ethan in the realm, Brian emerged unchanged by the experience, and Ethan sank into a deep depression from his failure and his anger at himself for even thinking such an idea would work. He considered completely resigning, as he could not forgive himself even after he had been forgiven by others. But he was forced back into working, even if it was simply paperwork until he could dull the memory long enough to have the long-delayed eureka moment that no, it wasn’t his fault that the cure was beyond him, that he was human and had limits.
He went back to his regular work the next day.
Over the course of the next six months, Ethan built himself back up to the confidence that he had lost after Brian, effectively moving past him but with a new goal: to remind himself that limits were there for very good reasons, and to never break them without cause.
Strengths/Weaknesses: He is just as vulnerable to everything as the everyday adult male human is physically, with the tendency to forget everything including food and drink when he gets absorbed into projects. Ethan will also get very obsessive towards his goals he sets for himself, and as such can be easily manipulated into doing things that would be "helpful" to the goals.Strength-wise, he's extremely intelligent, and picks up new things fast. He's got strong charisma and is most definitely a people person, able to navigate groups and work collaboratively with ease. And he's got a finely honed talent for electronics and computer repair-more with the delicate aspect rather than the larger scale, but he has experience with both. One trait that is both strength and weakness is his ability to fall into hyperfocus. In this, he can think detached from the situation around him and be able to get a large amount of work done in a short time, but if left to go on he'll forget to take care of himself until he passes out.
Abilities: Ethan has great skill in psychiatry, a decent grasp of information technology and programming, and very good social skills. He keeps his body in a healthy physical condition, and knows how to shoot a gun. He also knows quite a bit about electronics and how to repair them. Other than that, he's simply an average man.
Name: Ethan Ross
Age: 30
Appearance: Ethan is 5'9", of a leaner build. He prefers comfortable, simple clothes, normally wearing white shirts, sweaters or coats with some slacks or dark jeans. He's got short, dark hair that falls in some waves. Ethan's nearly always got a pen in one of his pockets, and writes on his arms when he has no paper. He tends to carry himself straight up, proud and tall, with a habit of using his hands to illustrate whatever he's talking about.
Chosen PB: Ben Whishaw + various art icons.
Personality: Pretty much, Ethan's default emotion is "calm/happy". He's an optimist, with the belief that hard work and time will allow anything to be made possible, on any scale. Got a personal goal? He says to pour all your effort into it. World peace? That will take more time, in his mind, but it's possible. Dedication forms the core of his life philosophy.
He's not very materialistic-living with no money for luxuries for a while made him think that although they are nice, luxuries aren't neccessary to live a fulfilling life. Instead, his passion lies with furthering his intellect through reading, learning, and listening to other's stories in the hope of learning from them. As much a teacher as a student, Ethan is glad to share his experiences and what he's learned if someone asks.
Ethan believes his calling is to help people, and so always keeps his eyes out for when he can. He doesn't try to force his help onto others, though, if it's rejected he'll just shrug his shoulders and keep the offer open. He's very social, navigating large groups with relative ease, and tries to give everyone a chance at acquaintanceship, if not friendship immediately. From his work with Cassandra, he's grown far more patient with people, and will put up with far more than he used to.
Depending on what emotion it is, it will either be over incredibly fast or take a long while. Anger never stays for long with him, he's inclined to forgive and forget after he's allowed to get his rage out, but sorrow is the opposite. He can stay sad for weeks, even if he pushes it aside to focus on other things. During this time, he's most likely to fall into what he's flirting with anyway in his work-obsession. Ethan will get interested in a project or a book or the like, and spend hours and hours with it, forgetting to eat or sleep until he'll pass out from physical and mental exhaustion. In this area of his life, Ethan proves himseld not intelligent about everything, as he never seems to learn. It's been a recurring theme throughout his life, from studies to training to investigations, he has the potential to become hyperfocused with it. Andie has been extremely helpful in getting him to recognize the beginning signs and so try to ward it off, but he's not always good at seeing them.
The long exposures to NINET he has had have caused him to have a light form of the Patient state, appearing in short flashes where he will slip into what's best described as a wake induced lucid dream (WILD) state. He dreams while awake, and cannot separate reality from dreams until it passes. During WILD state, his moods shift, he doesn't always make too much logical sense, and even hallucinates images at times. He's fully conscious of what he says and does during these periods, and apologizes if he's around people when the state passes.
World Information: The basic outline of Ethan's world is that it follows the modern day, but with an immense surge of progress in the sciences. This means electronics, biology, chemistry, physics, biotechnology, etc. have all taken massive strides forward in their development. Outside of that, it's still the same crazy bundles of political strife, social issues, etc. that today is. The specific change in Ethan's world that I focus on is the development of NINET, as that is what truly makes it another world.
History: Ethan Ross was born a normal, perfectly healthy son to a middle class family, growing up a practical stereotypical statistic. Quiet life, son to two parents in their thirties, learning to ride a bike and write his letters in his neighborhood while growing up. Sheltered? A little, but his parents only wanted what was best for their son. They had the dream of him growing up to be a lawyer, a business owner, something where he would take charge of his dream and power through.
He certainly had the charisma to do so. And no one could call him shy. Starting from elementary school, his circle of friends and acquaintances was strengthened into a solid bunch. You could call him fairly popular. And he lazed through his assignments, floating along with decent grades. He could have tried harder, anyone who knew Ethan knew if he had his mind on something he’d try his best, but there was no motivation. No spark to make him turn his eyes from random games and hanging out to his future. He’d become something, and it didn’t matter what.
All that shifted during his junior year of high school.
A collection of supposedly “incurable” mental health patients reached headline status around the globe. The reason why? The relatively recent method of treatment known as NINET had selected them out to receive their version of therapy and would make the results public. Much emphasis was placed upon the cases’ consent and the personal nature of the treatment. When the results were collected in the end, the results were stunning. All medical jargon and stilted phrasing aside, the sheer fact could be brought down to two words: it worked. And everyone had shown improvement, some even going so far as to be declared cured. Claims of false documentation and lying from the cases sprung up immediately, but in legal trials, the research was shown to be nothing but honesty.
Ethan watched it all enraptured. NINET was certainly something he had heard of, but never bothered to look at closely. It seemed too out there, too touchy to be realistic. But here was proof that the concept was valid, reachable, and that it really was all it wanted to be. Something to actually help those that needed it instead of just saying so. The people who ran it, the Doctors…they were honest, in a way that the others in the medical industry weren’t. And they became his idols.
He became obsessed with researching them, digging into the background of NINET, and seeing what it took to join them. This path became his dream, and he threw himself into schoolwork, trying to graduate high so he’d have a better shot at getting accepted to further education and from then on pursuing his goal. When he finished high school, second in his class, Ethan finally told his parents what he planned to do with his life. They didn’t take it well, and instead of supporting him, grew furious that he would dare take such a “dangerous” job, one so “inhumane” and “abnormal”. They vowed not to pay for any more education beyond the year of college they had already done for, demanding he switch his goals to something more sensible. Ethan sat and heard it all, nodding when appropriate, letting them rage. When they had settled down enough, he quietly told them that if that was the case, he would find a way to pay for the rest of his education and move out as soon as he could, as they were not going to stop him from following this. Tears, threats of disownment, bribery, nothing affected him, for in the end he would repeat his desire.
True to his word, during the year he picked up two jobs and moved in with his best friend while taking his courses, and spent the next three years getting by on nothing while never losing his oddly intense drive. During that time he took interviews and relentlessly worked so that he would get admitted to the Doctors’ training program directly after he got his degree. It paid off in the form of an early acceptance letter that guaranteed his immediate transfer to one of the campuses three months after the end of his final college year.
Ethan moved to the campus, unpacked his things, and descended into what was known among Doctors as “hell work”-four years of massively intense training that managed to combine medical school with information technology training, with an amount of hardware and engineering thrown in-Doctors were also expected to know how to repair small to moderate damage to the equipment. During this intense training, he fell majorly ill by pushing himself too far, but recovered within a month to catch up on the work he missed. Afterwards was the mandatory year of understudy as junior Doctor. During this time, Ethan met the Patient Cassandra Moriarty, and the two became friends. When the year ended and he received his certification (Ethan was 27 then), they began to work together.
In Ethan’s second year of working as a Doctor, him and “Andie”, as he had come to know her, encountered their most difficult Case, a man known in the records as solely “Brian”. Brian was a convicted murderer with bipolar disorder and psychosis, who had shown no reaction to regular therapy or medication. And as the pair would learn, he had no intention of letting NINET work, either. He refused to talk seriously to Ethan, leading into long sessions of no progress and testing the limits of Ethan’s patience. Finally, Ethan decided to create a realm based off of Brian’s delusions as a sort of last resort into attempting to help. He knew that this was risky, and should he be found out, some sort of punishment would have to happen. But seeing it work was too much of a lure for him, and so he went ahead and made the realm.
It was not a success, to put it mildly. After attempting to kill Ethan in the realm, Brian emerged unchanged by the experience, and Ethan sank into a deep depression from his failure and his anger at himself for even thinking such an idea would work. He considered completely resigning, as he could not forgive himself even after he had been forgiven by others. But he was forced back into working, even if it was simply paperwork until he could dull the memory long enough to have the long-delayed eureka moment that no, it wasn’t his fault that the cure was beyond him, that he was human and had limits.
He went back to his regular work the next day.
Over the course of the next six months, Ethan built himself back up to the confidence that he had lost after Brian, effectively moving past him but with a new goal: to remind himself that limits were there for very good reasons, and to never break them without cause.
Strengths/Weaknesses: He is just as vulnerable to everything as the everyday adult male human is physically, with the tendency to forget everything including food and drink when he gets absorbed into projects. Ethan will also get very obsessive towards his goals he sets for himself, and as such can be easily manipulated into doing things that would be "helpful" to the goals.Strength-wise, he's extremely intelligent, and picks up new things fast. He's got strong charisma and is most definitely a people person, able to navigate groups and work collaboratively with ease. And he's got a finely honed talent for electronics and computer repair-more with the delicate aspect rather than the larger scale, but he has experience with both. One trait that is both strength and weakness is his ability to fall into hyperfocus. In this, he can think detached from the situation around him and be able to get a large amount of work done in a short time, but if left to go on he'll forget to take care of himself until he passes out.
Abilities: Ethan has great skill in psychiatry, a decent grasp of information technology and programming, and very good social skills. He keeps his body in a healthy physical condition, and knows how to shoot a gun. He also knows quite a bit about electronics and how to repair them. Other than that, he's simply an average man.
